‘We had to wait longer than usual’: Portuguese-Brazilian twins’ lawyer refuses wedge treatment

A lawyer for the family of Portuguese-Brazilian twins treated at Santa Maria Hospital for spinal muscular atrophy denied there was any “wedge” and stressed that children’s access to treatment was one of the most time-consuming matters.

“It is important that they constantly collect more than 30 children already treated with this medicine in Portugal… My clients were the ones who had the longest waiting times, precisely because of the complexity of the case and the fact that they were children who came from -abroad. When you talk about a wedge, you imagine that it should be an advantage, but on the contrary, there was nothing like that. We had longer wait times than usual,” Wilson Bicalho said.

According to the lawyer, the children underwent treatment in June 2020, and permission from Infarmed to use the drug Zolgensma – one of the most expensive in the world – came, according to TVI/CNN, on March 3 in just two working days. after submitting the request, February 29.

In a conversation with Lusa, the lawyer also stressed that no one in the family knows the son of the President of the Republic, a day after Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa reported that he learned about the case from an email sent on October 21, 2019 by his son. , Nuno Rebelo de Souza, and this correspondence with the participation of the President of the Republic ceased after ten days, which guaranteed the absence of information about further actions in this case.

“Never [falaram com Nuno Rebelo de Sousa]. [A família] he doesn’t even know the son of the president of the republic,” he emphasized.

“On the issue of the son of the President of Portugal, we cannot say absolutely nothing, because we do not have the slightest idea. I can’t speak by his name, he wasn’t introduced to us, I don’t know. “I don’t know him personally and I don’t know what could have happened and what could not have happened. What I can say is that the case of these girls was a case of national unrest in Brazil, in which more than 50 thousand people participated at the same time. It doesn’t bother me that this topic is discussed by word of mouth between people and knowledge can reach someone,” Wilson Bicalho said.

The lawyer also assured that the family sent emails “to various centers in Portugal and they could not agree to a refusal” because they believed that they had the right to treatment, since the children would receive Portuguese citizenship. before diagnosis.

According to Wilson Bicalho, the naturalization process began in April 2019, and the diagnosis of spinal muscular atrophy was made only “in September or October,” after the process had been approved in Portugal.

Faced with ongoing investigations by the prosecutor’s office and the General Inspectorate of Health, the lawyer assured that “the family is ready” to provide clarification and emphasized that “it is in the interests of the family to contact any authorities that are investigating the case.”

Despite indicating that the mother of the Portuguese-Brazilian children is ready to come and testify, Wilson Bicalho, however, stressed that the family is “not psychologically ready” to travel to Portugal at this time.

The twins’ case was revealed in a TVI report broadcast in early November that the two Portuguese-Brazilian children traveled to Portugal in 2019 to receive the spinal muscular atrophy drug Zolgensma, which cost a total of about four million people. Euro.

According to TVI, there were suspicions that this happened under the influence of the President of the Republic, who denied any interference in the matter.

The case is being investigated by the Attorney General’s Office, the General Inspectorate of Medical Activities (IGAS), and is also the subject of an internal review at the Centro Hospitalar Universitário de Lisboa Norte, of which the Santa Maria Hospital is part.